Monday, September 30, 2013

Well, y'all, it's fall. It doesn't feel a lot like it here in Cardiganland, but as of tomorrow, it's officially October, baseball is thankfully nearly over, football is cranking into high gear, and pumpkin everything is happening everywhere. So I found an appropriately autumnal painting for Style Imitating Art. William Mason Brown painted mostly still lifes, mostly of fruit, mostly on the forest floor. Charming! Brown was born in Troy, New York, and spent his early life in Newark, New Jersey. He eventually moved to Brooklyn, and there he stayed until his death in 1898. Although the name William Mason Brown might not ring a bell, he was a pretty well known artist during his life and today his small pieces (at most 12 inches wide) can swing $30,000 at auction. Pretty impressive for a guy from the Hudson Valley.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

I admit to being neglectful of AC (and my schoolwork) for the last couple of weeks. I have been struggling to concentrate on much of anything lately, and kind of let a lot slip--everything but work, which at least is going well. But now that I'm really full time, I have a lot less time to keep everything rolling smoothly. I'm back on track now (totally listening to a lecture during commercial breaks during football), and all I need to do to finish my to-do list is wash my car and buy some corduroys. I think I can handle that.

Monday, September 16, 2013

The world recently learned that there's another painting by Vincent van Gogh floating around, and that's pretty amazing. I love that art can continue appearing even hundreds of years after it has been created. Email your photos of your interpretation to Salazar by the evening of Monday, September 23rd! Have fun, y'all!

Sunday, September 15, 2013

I was at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta yesterday for a Dutch masters exhibit, which included Girl with a Pearl Earring. I found a ton of artwork that you may see as inspiration for a future SIA! But most striking (and which I will be kind and not make you use for SIA) is this delightful portrait of Floride Bonneau Calhoun, a South Carolina debutante who was married to the one and only John C. Calhoun, a congressman from my very own South Carolina and vice president to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Yeah, I googled all that shit. Everyone who walked by this portrait stopped in their tracks, including myself. It's rather unexpected, to say the least, for a historical portrait to be so honest about the less-than-perfect qualities of one's physical attributes.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

This skirt is just American enough for me to remember 9/11 but not American enough for me to be Toby Keith about it. September 11th seems to have fallen off the face of importance already, but when I think "already", I remember that it was twelve years ago and in the world, twelve years ago is enough to leave almost anything by the wayside. I feel like my age was of large import regarding my staunch memory of 9/11--I was 15 and it was my first time encountering anything bad and I didn't know what came next, the same way that when Pope John Paul II died I didn't know what going to happen. Wars and white smoke are apparently what happened. But September 11th was an odd awakening for me, and terribly enough, I was better off for it. The delicacy of the world was shattered before I actually had to enter it, and that was kind of a good thing, at least for me. Not for humanity, though. That's another story.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

I've heard this a number of times before. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously. Being a librarian runs the weird spectrum of either being a stuffy, angry old lady with a severe bun and severer glasses to being super-sexy with a half open button down and and a short, super tight pencil skirt. Compare these two images, for example.

Kill me now, please.

I didn't get into librarianship because I was a grump old coot or a sex bomb. People don't (usually) pick their life careers based on how they look or want to look to others. But there's no other profession, I think, that has the level of physical stereotyping that librarianship does. I don't know about you, but when I was young, I never encountered either of the librarians above. My first librarian was a 30something African-American woman with short hair who wore khakis. My second librarian was a grumpy old man, a rarity in the field. I work in a public library now, which is what the average person thinks of when he or she hears "librarian", and my coworkers now run the sheer gamut, though they are mostly women, and a solid 80% of them don't wear pencil skirts or buns.

I've never introduced myself as a librarian: I'm not really officially one until December 16th, and I hate telling people I'm something I'm not, even though most people look at all library employees the same way. We're all librarians, from the pages who shelve the books to the head of HR to the systems department, who may not even know how to work our staff client that handles everything from searching for books to cataloging and patron information (our ILS, for those of us who really are librarians). We're all librarians, even though we're not, and we're crammed into these two stereotypes, even though we're not.

I don't generally blog my outfits as a librarian and how a librarian dresses, but just how I dress on a day to day basis. Most of these outfits are for work, of course, but I also write about what I wear to concerts and weddings. I am a librarian at neither of those things. But aren't we all defined by what we do? When someone says "tell me about yourself" or "who are you", don't you first explain your job? And at heart, I am a librarian. I just wish that didn't mean that I simultaneously dragged "sexy" and "grumpy" behind me like a ball and chain.

For a view of the actual broad range of librarian style, take a look at Amber's Check Us Out linkup from Friday. Screw buns and pencil skirts!

Today was my first day doing the job I interviewed for, and it felt no different than my old job. I work at the same library, in the same department, doing the same things, just in a greater capacity. There's a lot coming down the pipe, but right now, my department's in survival mode because two positions are currently open. Soooo I've just been doing my usual, and I'm happy with that. I did spend three whole minutes in my new office today, which is kind of a big deal. It's an advanced upgrade from the drawer that I had all to myself, to say the least.

Monday, September 2, 2013

I was in New Orleans back in 2011, and at one point I rounded a corner and encountered a giant blue dog staring me in the face. You've probably seen the darling Blue Dog before too, though maybe not in as striking a way. It's the end of summer, and I wanted to do something cute. What can I say? Send me your submissions by the end of the day on Monday, September 9th. Have fun!

I'm Jess.
I'm 29.
This is my blog,
where I post self-taken photos
of what I wear.
If you can get over the fact that
I don't smile endlessly,
and that I'm okay with my weight,
we'll get along fantastically.